Sen. Martha McSally (R-AZ) is encouraging the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs to provide small businesses relief regarding targeted banking regulations.
During a recent Committee hearing, McSally pressed key banking regulatory agency leaders on the inability to improve enforcement of anti-money laundering rules to protect Arizona businesses and efficiently combat criminal activity.
“I represent Arizona and over the last few years there have been significant challenges with those businesses in Nogales and Douglas—legitimate businesses, family-owned businesses that have had their accounts closed because of the Anti-Money Laundering and Bank Secrecy Act (AMLBSA),” McSally said. “This has really hurt our community. While we’ve got to stop the cartels and the illegal cross-border money laundering, we need to make sure that these small businesses who are doing legitimate commerce are protected – that includes cross-border.”
McSally said at the previous request of lawmakers, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) conducted a study on the matter last year.
“Each of your organizations responded to that by saying you were going to collaborate more with each other to make sure that these rules for anti-money laundering would be more tailored to make sure that it’s impacting obviously illegitimate activities without hurting and closing legitimate businesses,” McSally said, requesting an update since the GAO report.
She said such an update is necessary because of the impacts being faced heavily by Arizona.
“This particular group meets once a month collectively together and our staffs meet once a week, and we have a list of items that we’ve been focused on to try to bring clarity, and we’re tailoring where it was appropriate,” Comptroller of the Currency Joseph M. Otting said. “The big lever I would say to that would be later this year we plan to introduce the examination manual and that I think we’re looking more to move toward a risk-based approach on that process.”
McSally asked that Otting “stay in touch” with her office regarding a specific timeline of when such updates will be seen.